Policy —

AT&T, have you no shame?

Inside the company's customer-enraging plan to limit FaceTime.

The spirit of the law

Whatever is going on here—clearly, "transparency" only goes so far in this business—it's possible AT&T and its lawyers have in fact orchestrated the entire approach to stay on the right side of FCC rules. While this is an interesting legal debate to have, it largely ignores the spirit of the "Open Internet" rules.

The “Open Internet” is the Internet as we know it. It’s open because it uses free, publicly available standards that anyone can access and build to, and it treats all traffic that flows across the network in roughly the same way. The principle of the Open Internet is sometimes referred to as “net neutrality.” Under this principle, consumers can make their own choices about what applications and services to use and are free to decide what lawful content they want to access, create, or share with others. This openness promotes competition and enables investment and innovation.

The Open Internet also makes it possible for anyone, anywhere to easily launch innovative applications and services, revolutionizing the way people communicate, participate, create, and do business—think of e-mail, blogs, voice and video conferencing, streaming video, and online shopping. Once you’re online, you don’t have to ask permission or pay tolls to broadband providers to reach others on the network. If you develop an innovative new website, you don’t have to get permission to share it with the world.

Preach it, Commissioners!

Except that, when we come down from Idealism Peak and re-enter the Real World Valley, companies do need "permission" to launch "innovative applications and services." It's hard to believe, for instance, that it was Apple's desire to make FaceTime work less well for its customers on one specific network. Apple has made clear that supporting FaceTime over 3G is up to the carrier—an admission that permission-based innovation is alive and well in the mobile world in a way it has never been in the wired world.

Once again, it's iPhone users who are causing problems for AT&T.

Aurich Lawson

The crowd goes wild

Whatever legal, political, and technical merits lie behind the FaceTime decision, the outpouring of customer rage has been something to behold. Consider just a few of the (many) comments left on AT&T's blog post:

This is the most unprofessional public statement I have ever read. In effect, you are telling the world, don’t use FaceTime, use someone else’s video chat software. AT&T, there is no difference between what you are and what Ma-Bell was. And for the millions of people who joined your network to obtain the best smart phone ever made, you prevent us from using the software designed by the people who made the phone. It’s pitiful, simply pitiful.

And:

This defensive post completely misses the point. At its core, what is making customers angry about this is not net neutrality. Do you really think the average customer cares about net neutrality? So you came up with a clever way to technically—and just barely—stay in compliance with an industry regulation. Congratulations! All customers see is a clumsy organization trying to funnel us from older, cheaper, better rate plans into more expensive, restrictive rate plans.

And:

Very funny! You don’t have a single supporting comment on here. You’ll be apologizing soon enough for even posting such a dumb response.

And:

If you restrict FaceTime over cellular in ANY WAY I will cancel my family plan and take my business to Verizon!!... I pay you for internet access and it should not be up to you how I use it. Frankly, I am sick and tired of you placing restrictions and limitations on services that I pay you for!

And:

PERHAPS it is or isn’t a violation of net neutrality. But it’s certainly not endearing you to your customers, some of whom no longer have contracts, and many of whom now have options (Verizon, Sprint) with the iPhone.

And:

Voice is data, text is data, FaceTime is data. Everything that is transmitted over a cellular connection is data. The only reason some data is more expensive than other data is because AT&T (and all of the other carriers for that matter) are greedy and will use any excuse to pad the bill. This FaceTime policy is the clearest example (as if texting wasn’t) of their avarice yet.

And:

All I’ve got to say is this is total BS. Data is data. When I pay for 3G of data, who cares how I use it? Facetime, Skype, Tango, Netflix, Youtube??? If I go over, that’s my problem, but to tell me that I have to switch to a more expensive plan just to use it [is] WRONG !!!

And:

AT&T is certainly not winning customers over with this half-baked PR-laden corpospeak. They can hardly handle current traffic, so I understand their fear that FaceTime usage will add another blow to a rudimentary network. However, if they can’t handle 2012 technology, I would suggest they hand back the spectrum to the People of the United States of America, so that we can find a competent carrier to whom to lease.

And:

Wow. I was considering sticking with AT&T because I was planning on moving [to the] new “Shared Plans” anyway. This one post in its entirely sealed the deal for me. There is absolutely no way I would stay with a company that instead of listening to its customers, posts to their blog saying that our concerns are “knee jerk” reactions.

And:

AT&T, this is despicable. I can’t believe your PR department allowed that sorry excuse for a response to go out. The problem here isn’t Net Neutrality. The problem is you are an out of touch, greedy, selfish company. I don’t begrudge any company from making a profit, but this is ridiculous. If AT&T wants to keep its customer base you need to find ways to delight your customers.

They continue in that vein for some time. A couple hundred comments are unlikely to alter the thinking (or "thinking," depending on your point of view) up in the AT&T Death Star. Blog comments are of course not representative of customers as a whole, and it may well be true that the vast majority of AT&T users simply shrug, accepting the AT&T line: "Hey, we can do more now than we could do before. Progress!"

The real problem

This would be a shame. The real issue here isn't FaceTime, but the future of innovation—and who controls it—in mobile computing. Mobile computing is running so rapidly down the road to ubiquity that even my newly retired parents now own two iPads so they can play Scrabble against each other from across the living room. In this new world of devices and connectivity, what role do we want the carriers to play in controlling what works where?

AT&T's vision is on display in the first sentence of Quinn's post: "Last week, we confirmed plans to make FaceTime available over our mobile broadband network for our AT&T Mobile Share data plan customers." In Carrier World, the carriers get to "make apps available" to users on the carriers' own timeframes—as they have generally done in the wireless world.

Despite the fact that AT&T's DSL service at my home tops out at 6Mbps and will soon be beaten by mobile devices accessing mobile LTE networks, it is impossible to imagine the company telling me that I should be grateful for being allowed to run some program over my Internet connection. Quinn's blog post is titled "Enabling FaceTime," but thankfully AT&T doesn't get to "enable" anything on wired networks: developers code without permission and I run their apps without permission.

So what's the solution? Competition plays a key role. While we would prefer a slightly stronger standard for wireless net neutrality, customers generally do have more choice when it comes to wireless carriers than they do in the wired world. Switching isn't easy, especially in the US world of contract and early termination fees, so the mere existence of competition doesn't always work magic, but those who want to use FaceTime do at least have the choice of moving to a company like Sprint.

Angry customers can switch carriers, but one has only to read people's angry rants to realize that cell service isn't like just picking another brand of toothpaste after the brand you love kills your favorite "Mint Medley" flavor and replaces it with "Black Licorice." Just as AT&T knows most customers will stick with existing apps, it knows that most customers will stick with their existing phones and plans.

The FCC has already ceded the fight over wireless net neutrality—and even the weak rules it did pass are currently facing a court challenge from carriers—which limits the effectiveness of the laudable transparency requirements. So irate customers see the current FCC rules as toothless: carriers can drop their old policies of screwing customers without disclosure in favor of screwing customers after making a public announcement.

As one wrote:

Kudos, Bob! At least you are being honest with your customers and openly admit that you are screwing us.

Perhaps competition will best sort this all out. Perhaps giving AT&T a gentle throttle on innovation isn't much worse than having a dominant phone and tablet maker like Apple run a curated App Store. But what remains after all the policy and technical arguments are stripped away is the indisputable observation that AT&T has a remarkable knack for enraging its tech-savvy customers. It's hard to argue that AT&T is truly a customer-focused organization; the entire tone of the Quinn piece, despite hitting the requisite notes about "learning" and "listening," is combative and dismissive, never acknowledging the real concerns that customers have about policies like this one. Instead, what we get is inside-the-Beltway body slams involving the arcana of FCC regulations.

Just imagine well-loved companies like Trader Joe's or Netflix (pre-Qwikster disaster) eliciting rage from literally everyone writing comments on their corporate blogs. And such rage, too. As the very first comment on Quinn's post put it: